As 2012 came to a close, and many of us were in the holiday rush of family visits and gift-giving, a prisoner escaped from the James A. Musick Facility.

Having little knowledge of the detention facility on Irvine's doorstep, I called the Orange County Sheriff's Department to schedule a tour of the jail. I had to submit to a background check. Presumably, I passed because a couple of weeks later I received the call that I was cleared to go inside the jail.

Near where Irvine Boulevard and the new Alton Road extension meet, you'll find the 100-plus acre facility that housed about 1,300 detainees and inmates at the time of my visit.

Men and women have separate quarters, which look a lot like an average summer camp if it weren't for the razor wire and tall fences. There are no bars and no cells.

Musick focuses on rehabilitation and reducing recidivism rates. Woodshop, computer skills and obtaining a GED are all learning options for Musick's inmates.

Inmates can have visitors weekends from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. – one visitation per day, for 30 minutes. Visitors must submit to a metal detector and can bring "their keys and glasses only," according to Lt. Kirk Lapean, who showed me around.

Everyone gets at least four hours of recreation time a day. Inmates are encouraged to work, and they get credits toward reducing their sentence if they do. Most inmates choose to take on a job such as kitchen duty, landscaping or laundry.

Musick is largely a self-regulating environment: Inmates know that if they act out they will be shipped off to another jail – one with a considerably less amenable environment.

Some aspects of daily life at Musick are decidedly unpleasant. All clothing (undergarments included) is provided by the jail and washed together, without any assignation of "ownership." So, you might be wearing the underpants on Friday that your bunkmate wore on Monday. When I expressed some surprise over this, Lapean, who is in charge of the jail, said, "We are not running a dry cleaner. You get what we give you."

Nevertheless, Marvin Manzo, 35, an inmate with a history of theft and drug use, apparently escaped in December by cutting the outer hard plastic wall of the bunkhouse. He climbed a tall fence and wiggled his way through razor wire to get to the outside. As he pointed up at the fence, Lapean said, "Do you know how we knew that this was the spot where he escaped?" I shook my head. "Because his pants were still stuck in the razor wire – but he wasn't in them."

More security measures have been put into place since the jailbreak.

The jail is in the news for another reason: The Lake Forest City Council recently approved an agreement among the city, the county and the Orange County Sheriff's Department to more than double the capacity of the facility. The agreement would allow the jail to house medium-security inmates, in addition to minimum-security inmates.

Irvine challenged the expansion in court, but an Orange County Superior Court judge ruled in the county's favor in November. In December, Irvine City Council voted to appeal the court's decision.

The late 2012 escape may have momentarily heightened Irvine residents' anxieties about criminals being housed at Irvine's edge. But after touring the facility, my feeling is that the current setup does not pose a danger to the community. However, the expansion is another story. Greater numbers of criminals and higher-risk criminals is cause for concern.

If the city wants to win the fight against jail expansion, it should dust off some of the techniques used to win the successful fight against the airport: Educate and mobilize the voters and the business community through direct mail and press outreach. Foster a grassroots effort to put pressure on the sheriff and force a compromise that would be more acceptable.

Adam Probolsky of Irvine is CEO of Probolsky Research LLC, which specializes in opinion research for government, business and political clients. Contact: @AdamProbolsky or adamprobolsky@gmail.com.

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